How To: Creating Really Good Advertising Ideas for Complex Products and Services

The First Few Steps Towards Creative Advertising:

Understanding the Needs of your Audience

Knowing the needs of the audience is important for every ad campaign. But when your product is complex, simplifying your message is easier when you’ve narrowed down the points you need to make. A finely-tuned message helps you minimize the distractions of complexity.

Let’s imagine you want to increase sales of a new medical device. Healthcare professionals want to see detailed proof that the product delivers better outcomes in their patients. But the consumer audience isn’t going to have the medical background that pros have. Those differences can necessitate a big adjustment in your message, even if the product and the desired result is the same.

The Knowledge Level of your Audience

Perhaps you’re speaking to an expert audience. In that case, demonstrating accuracy and sophistication will score high marks. If the ad is inaccurate or out of step with your industry, they’ll pick up on it right away.

If your audiences aren’t experts, it doesn’t mean they’re not smart. But it does mean you have to communicate your message in a way they can understand quickly. It’s probably better to not go granular on the details. Simple is smart. If they’re intrigued, they’ll want to learn more.

Utilizing the Best Ad Mediums

In an era with a myriad of advertising mediums, you already know it’s important to choose the ones that suit your audience best. But you must also tailor your message to the medium. This is important for any brand, but especially if your brand is technically complex. Be compelling, honest, and compliant with applicable regulations, but don’t try to communicate everything at once. Your message should be just enough to pique interest. Your website, collateral, and sales reps can be as thorough as needed.

Finding the Main Idea to Communicate

What is the number one most important thing your audience needs to know? For a complex product or service, you must be precise. If you can’t communicate the main idea in one or two sentences, it’s too long. By making the main idea as simple as possible, the overall message will be much more compelling to your audience.

Explaining the Purpose Behind your Brand

Your offering may be technically complex. But your purpose is probably simple. Do you want to help people improve lives? Help companies become more successful? Help doctors provide care? Help our society overcome vexing challenges? Consider making your message about that, and follow up with technical details.

Video Demonstrations

How does that phrase go? A picture’s worth a thousand words? Online video is a powerful and effective advertising medium for complex brands—and probably worth more than the aforementioned thousand words. Demonstrate the value of your brand.

Focus on the Result

Sometimes, it’s easier for people to understand what a product is if they know its end result first. For example, advertising a complex medical device to a consumer audience may be more effective if the main message is its positive impact to health. Once the audience understands that, you can communicate the important technical points.

Comparisons

Your offering may be complex, but you may be able to compare its main benefit to something your audience can understand. Make your main message as digestible as possible up front. Then, you can expand on the features as your audience explores further.

bfw Advertising: An agency that thrives on complex products and services.

Most ad agencies thrive on simple, everyday products and services. We like those, but we thrive on the difficult stuff. Our team attracts designers, writers, and strategists with big brains and strong hearts. We’ll dive head first into your technically-complex brand and unearth the insights we need to deliver really good advertising ideas.

bfw is a tight knit collection of writers, artists, designers, technologists and thinkers who share a common passion for doing great work that makes things happen. For more information call (561) 962-3300 or visit www.gobfw.com.